Boom Boom
by Lilae Kane
Summary: Andromeda Black is always a little too curious about things, Ted Tonks gets a little too sad sometimes, and a chance explosion in a potions classroom will change everything.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hi loves! I'm slamming back into the HP fanfiction fandom with a Tedromeda fanfic and I've been working on it for over a year already so I promise it'll get finished - I've devoted way too much time and heart_ _to let it slide now. Ted & Andy are honestly the purest, sweetest couple but I haven't seen a fanfic that's captured the full extent of their relationship and I hope (I HOPE) this one will. Enjoy!_

 _DISCLAIMER: I do not own Ted or Andromeda or any Harry Potter characters/universe. All of that lovely loveliness goes to JKR_.

* * *

Chapter 1

-September, 1969, 5th Year-

Beside Andromeda, the heat of the potions classroom was getting a little much for Ted Tonks, who'd already shrugged off his cloak and pulled off his sweater. His abandoned clothes now lay on the floor, gathering dust as he rolled up his sleeves.  
Andromeda felt something inside her chest give a sharp tug and, in surprise, dropped the boomslang skin she'd been holding so gingerly.

"Bollocks," she said, scowling. The ingredient she hated most in the world was now taunting her, its slimy scales splattered all over her patent-leather shoes.

"Bollocks? I think I missed that ingredient," Tonks replied. He smiled at his own joke as he crouched down and picked up Andromeda's boomslang skin from the floor (much more calmly than she would have done) and chucked it into the rubbish bin. "Need another piece?" he asked.

"No, it's all right," she said, blinking as Ted turned away from her. He peered into his potion with the look of someone who was a little bewildered at the contents of his pot, then shrugged and began to stir. It was disconcerting - usually mudbloods weren't so keen on her, but Ted Tonks was nothing but friendly.

"Know that I didn't choose to sit here with you," she said after a moment - she wanted to make things perfectly clear. "I came here late, and this was the last seat available. Otherwise I would never be caught dead sitting with a mudblood, especially during OWL year, and-"

"I understand," Ted said, chopping (unevenly) a bubotuber root, a new edge to his voice. "I mind my space, you mind yours, and we don't interact."

That shut her up for awhile.

She was decidedly not angry about it - she was just so shocked that a mudblood had spoken to her in such a kind-but-firm tone that she didn't have a response for it.

She wasn't even sure if she was supposed to take offense or not - what did you do when a mudblood told you they "understood" and basically ordered you to do the very thing you wanted to do in the first place?

'Probably,' she thought, 'This would upset anyone else.'

Who was Edward Tonks to tell Andromeda Black to mind her space, anyway? It wasn't as if she was bothering him. It wasn't as if she wanted to speak to him in the first place - why was he so self-centered anyway? Nothing about his life was so interesting as to attract a Slytherin pureblood's attention. It wasn't as if Andromeda Black lay awake during the wee hours of the morning wondering what went on in Muggle households, no. Maybe only one wee hour. Or two.

"Edward," she said after many minutes of thought along this vein (which also meant many minutes of ignoring her potion, which now smelled of burning metal and had started sparking at intervals), "What's a telly?"

"A telly?" Ted paused, fingers poised over his cauldron (he seemed surprised enough at her voice to forget that she didn't want him speaking to her).

Andromeda rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, her voice gaining strength now that she knew she wasn't going to be ignored. "Are you deaf? Yes, what's a telly?"

Ted set his badly-mutilated bubotuber stem down and looked far ahead, as if he could see past the Hogwarts grounds and all the way home, where a his muggle device rested on a little stand in a sitting room.

"Well," he said, eventually, "It's like a box with photographs on it, but they tell a story. Like a book but in pictures, and bigger."

"Oh."

"My favorite programme is probably one called Doctor Who," Ted volunteered, though he wasn't looking at Andromeda as he stirred his potion (which had turned a sublime, light-green shade, quite a contrast to Andy's orange, sparking thing). "It stars a time lord who travels throughout the galaxy and... well, generally he makes things go-"

BOOM!

Both Andromeda and Ted jumped back as Andromeda's potion turned into a pyrotechnics display, clumps of Druble wings and Gillyweed flying out of the cauldron as a large portion of it shot straight up to the ceiling and stuck there (to drip and glob back onto the table at intervals).  
The small percentage of the class that had turned around at the noise (explosions tended to happen fairly often in the Potions classroom) stared for one frozen second before resuming their work.

'Fuck,' Andromeda thought, and groaned aloud. "Blast it all!" She swore and kicked a leg of the table with her foot, scuffing the toe of her shoe in the process and half hoping that some higher power would simply strike her down where she stood (next to a mudblood and covered in russet-orange slime, that is).

"A little late to be making that demand," Ted said pleasantly, the very picture of calm, tapping the rim of Andromeda's cauldron with his wand and eradicating its foul-smelling contents.

"You forgot to add your boomslang skin, Miss Black!" This was Slughorn, the flabby potions master. "It acts as a damper for this rather violent concoction. In fact, in Boris the Blubbery's creation of the potion, he blew a minimum of four holes in the walls and ceilings of his home per day."

Andromeda huffed. "Why are we making a potion that's certifiably insane!?" She snapped under her breath.

"Certifiably insane?" Ted echoed, his tone carefully measured, like the batter in a mud pie. "I wouldn't say that. Bit obnoxious, maybe, kind of scary, very hot... but not insane, I don't think."

"What?"

Ted shrugged, and the easy smile that was ever-present on his face only grew. "Never mind," he said.

"...Right," Andromeda replied, brow furrowed in confusion.

"So, Miss Black," Slughorn said, the jolly tone of his voice making Andromeda's scowl only deepen, "You'll look on with Mr. Tonks for the time being, yes?"

"Do I have to, Professor?" She whined (if she'd been alone, maybe she would have complied, but when surrounded by a host of your classmates, one could not simply 'look on' with some mudblood).

"Technically, my dear, you do not," Slughorn said, a smile on his pudgy, perspiring face, "But that will give you no better than a zero for today's lesson."

And so, rolling her eyes, Andromeda gave Ted's workspace her attention.

* * *

"All right, the next ingredient is… five blue-bearded dragons' eggs."

Nodding to show he'd heard her, Ted gathered the marble-like eggs in his hands and dropped them into the pot, where they made quick plunk! sounds as they hit the water.

Deciding that moping about her own destroyed potion was a silly idea, Andromeda and Ted had quickly settled into a routine: Andromeda would tell him what to do, and he'd do it. He had a knack for talking, though, that kept Andromeda from seeing him as an underling - and there was also the fact that her potion had ceased to exist a few minutes prior, while his had stayed perfectly intact.

"Where do blue eggs come from?"

"What?"

"Blue eggs," Ted repeated, a little bit louder. "Where do they come from?"

Andromeda raised an eyebrow at him (it was right in the ingredients' list, wasn't it?).

"Er - bearded dragons?"

"From sad chickens."

Andromeda stared at him (trying not to laugh out loud at his so-awful-it-was-funny joke).

"That is… the saddest thing I've ever heard in my entire life."

"Sad as sad chickens?"

And then she couldn't help it - she smiled.

"...Maybe not quite."

He smiled back - a grin wide as a cracked nut - and for some reason something tumbled inside of Andromeda's stomach.

Both fifth years quickly tore their eyes away from each other and busied themselves with their books.

"All right, what's last, then?"

"Well… could you pass me a knife?" Andy asked, ready to slice up the last ingredient (she'd learned earlier that Edward Tonks was particularly awful at chopping and demanded he let her do it for the rest of the period).

Ted shot her the most serious look (the only serious look, really) he'd given her all morning.

"No."

"Oh. Okay," Andromeda said. She put a complacent smile on her face as she suppressed the weight that had just gathered in her chest and tried to refocus on the task ('So much for meeting an actual nice person for once in my life,' she couldn't help thinking).

"...Haven't you ever heard of sarcasm, Andromeda?" Ted asked, and Andy looked up to see him holding out the knife for her, its blade shining silver in the dusty light of the potions classroom, a bright smile on his face.

* * *

"Andy," Bella said, in a singsong voice, almost ten hours later, "I heard you've been unfortunately paired with that hideous Mudblood Ted Tonks."

"Mmhm," Andromeda said, continuing to cut her slice of chocolate cake as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said (because really, it hadn't). "For an entire year." She rolled her eyes for the effect it would have on Bella and Narcissa, and they both delivered, smirking at each other and then at Andy.

Andromeda put on lots of subtle shows, she knew, but her sisters were usually her only audience. In fact, Andromeda couldn't remember a time in the previous term that she'd had so much as a one minute conversation with anyone in her year. Ninety percent of the time she was flanked on both sides by her two sisters, and then other people rarely approached them. It came with the social status.

The dinner conversation had moved, as Andromeda was trying to figure out if she'd been nice to anyone at all in the last year, to the new chandeliers Mother had bought that day. Finding everything about her house extremely uninteresting (because her family never stopped talking about it), Andromeda looked around to see if, amid everyone eating, there was anything interesting to watch. Perhaps a Hogwarts ghost had decided to teach a few students how to dance, or something similarly strange.

Ted Tonks caught her eye across their respective House tables and gave her a bright smile, parting his lips to reveal a slice of an orange peel for teeth.

Andromeda giggled against her will.

"What're you laughing at, Andy, for fuck's sake?"

"A Hufflepuff just tripped over his own feet," Andy covered, breaking eye contact with Ted to focus on Bella's much closer, much more serious face.

* * *

 _Boom. Reviews are chocolates (leave some for me?)_


	2. Chapter 2

_Hi all! How are you? Are you ready for Ted's POV? I am :)_  
 _Enjoy!_

* * *

Chapter 2

Ted Tonks was not light inside.

When he was three, he was sitting in his high chair and his arm broke on its own. This was the first time Ted's uncontrolled magical ability let him harm himself, and it was not the last.

Kate and Ben Tonks, obviously, were worried out of their minds. Their situation wasn't as awful as it could have been, because Ted's many "injuries" always disappeared within hours, but this did not comfort them. Neither did the fact that they had absolutely no clue how to help him.

It was only after they'd seen a great many baffled doctors and ended up on the local news that a tall, grave-looking man in a silvery dress-looking thing showed up on their doorstep and informed them of "the necessaries."

Ted Tonks was a wizard.

Ted Tonks was also to be watched very carefully by other older, better wizards, to make sure he didn't become something called an obscurus before he could begin school at a place called Hogwarts and learn to temper his uncontrollable episodes of depression.

Because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, by the time Ted was nine, he was arguably the most unwaveringly kind person either of his parents had ever met. He climbed into trees to rescue cats, he gave strangers his umbrella if they were caught in the rain, and he had a way of talking to people that made them gravitate towards him.

He boarded the Hogwarts Express when he was eleven, burdened with a heavy trunk and the bright prospect of meeting hundreds of people like him(but few, he expected, that had to work so hard to be consistently happy). He settled into the first empty compartment he could find and fell asleep within minutes, the chug-a-chug of the train lulling him to dreamland.

Unbeknownst to him, frizzy-haired twelve-year-old and her sleek-headed first-year sister had made it their mission to infiltrate every train compartment on the way to Hogwarts.

"Wait, Bella, there's someone in there!" the younger witch said, tugging at her sister's sleeve as they began to open the compartment in which Ted Tonks slept so peacefully.

"He's just asleep, Andy, calm your tits," Bella said, parrying the smaller girl's grab rather easily and pulling her into the compartment by the wrist.

"I'm eleven, I don't have tits."

"Everyone has fucking tits, Andromeda. Men have tits."

"Don't be vile, Bella!"

"I'm not, I'm being honest!"

"You don't think a person can be both?" said an unfamiliar voice.

Both girls froze.

Ted, who they'd been ignoring up until the present moment, was looking at them both rather sleepily, a lazy smile on his face.

Andromeda immediately said the first thing that came to her mind (something her sister would chastise her for later). "Who are you?"

"Ted," said Ted, and then he yawned. "Who're you?"

"I'm Andromeda Black," the brunette girl said, stepping forward as if to go sit next to the boy in front of her. "Is Ted short for Edward?"

The older girl's nails dug into her sister's - Andromeda's - wrist, preventing her from moving any further. "You're Ted _what_?" She demanded, her expression all hard edges, like a cube made of glass. "Are you related to the Blacks at all? Are you a mudblood?"

"What's a mudblood?" Ted asked, still a bit groggy from his nap.

"That's our answer, then," Bellatrix said nastily and pivoted, readying to leave, but just as she reached for the compartment door, it slid open to admit a second small boy.

The first thing Ted noticed about him was that his ears were rather large - Ted's were rather small by comparison. He was very skinny - Ted was a good deal chubbier - and his complexion was very dark while Ted's was a shade or two lighter.

Ted had a feeling they were going to be best friends.

"Hullo, all," the boy said, smiling just as easily as Ted usually did. "Kingsley Shacklebolt, at your service. Do any of you mind if I sit?"

"Shacklebolt," the elder sister said loudly, though Ted could tell her commentary was reserved for her companion only.

"So you're one of us," Andromeda said, and Ted was quite sure he wasn't included in whatever 'us' she meant.

Kingsley gave Andromeda a look - the same look Ted's mum gave his dad when he forgot to fill out Very Important Formal Documents and then had a long conversation with him about family and priorities and blah blah blah.

"If, by 'one of us,'" Kingsley said, "You mean blood purists, no, I'm not."

When neither girl responded, Kingsley raised his eyebrows. "Bye, then," he said, his tone final.

"As you wish. Keep your filthy little company as you please. Come on, Andromeda," Bella said, yanking her younger sister's wrist so hard that the brunette almost tripped.

Andromeda looked once over her shoulder at Ted as she stepped around Kingsley's trunk, Mary-Jane shoes small and light on the carriage floor, but her eye contact with the so-called-mudblood was fleeting, and then the girls were gone.

"Dismissal's the only way to get people like that off your back," the boy called Kingsley said, shrugging as he sat down next to Ted and heaved his trunk up onto the seat. It was large as a full-grown pig and had words stamped all over the surface, but Ted couldn't read them for trying - everything was worn with time. Kingsley pulled the leather straps loose and lifted the trunk's top, retrieving a metal canister from its depths. "Want some?" he asked. "It's pumpkin juice."

Ted raised an eyebrow. Pumpkin juice? "S'pose it can't hurt, yeah?"

And he reached for the canister.

* * *

-September, 1969, 5th Year-

Fifteen-year-old Ted Tonks was realizing that what he looked forward to most about the day was that he would be having lunch in a few hours.

It wasn't exactly a cheery thought - lunch, that was - but at least he was thinking something at all. It was incredibly hard for you to have real thoughts when someone like Andromeda Black was standing next to you. She was all of the girls Ted's dad had warned him about: she walked with her nose in the air (as if her pure blood was untouchable), she only ever spoke to her two sisters (and when she did, you knew she was gossiping about you), and every once in awhile she would train her eyes on you for ages (as if calculating your body mass index).

And she was also beautiful. Her molasses-toned hair fell in layers like sheets of velvet down her back, she wore her Hogwarts uniform in a way that could only be described as 'artfully tousled', and her eyes were so dark that Ted thought if he looked straight at them for too long he'd fall in.

It was only natural that a boy who'd only just gone from short and overweight to tall and bony in the past two months (a boy like Ted Tonks, perhaps), would find it rather difficult to stand next to a girl like that and monitor a boiling, steaming, sizzling cauldron at the same time.

In the past hour, Ted had succeeded in making no less than twenty terrible puns and one (failed) attempt at flirting. He'd also almost gone on a terrifically long tangent about Doctor Who (but then Andromeda's potion had exploded, which had changed the subject fairly efficiently). If he was looking on the bright side, she didn't seem to mind, and she'd only called him a mudblood once (far less than any other Slytherin he'd talked to before).

Now, the bell had just rung, and Ted was in the middle of copying down the homework, which was the fantastically riveting (just joking) task of writing fifteen inches on boomslang skin and its various uses, in his notebook. He was just beginning to feel rather anxious about everyone leaving the classroom before him when Andromeda said, "What in Merlin's name have you done with your quill?"

She was fairly alarmed, he realized, as he held his little wooden instrument up to her stricken face.

"...This is a pencil, actually," he said, trying not to chuckle at her expression, "But quills are almost as cool."

Andromeda snorted. "That's ridiculous," she said, and returned to her own writing utensil and notebook.

Eventually, they were the only students left.

"Great working with you today, Miss Black," Ted said as he slung one of his bag straps over his shoulder, only partly joking. "Maybe your cauldron won't combust next time."

"Yes," Andromeda said, her voice soft as she turned towards the doorway, pausing only to look back at him for the briefest of moments. "Maybe it won't."

* * *

"Who are you smiling at?" Kingsley asked almost ten hours later, sliding down the Hufflepuff table with his mound of dinner piled onto a giant plate and his Gryffindor tie hanging loose around his neck.

"Andromeda Black, surprisingly," Ted said once he'd removed most of the orange peel bits from his mouth, and grinned as Kingsley's eyebrows disappeared into his hair. "She's just my Potions partner, Shack. Nothing like what you're thinking."

"Andromeda Black? Odd, that one," said Emmeline Vance as she sat down across from the two boys.

Kingsley's eyebrows did not return. "Odd? More psychotic, I'd say."

"Nah, that's Bellatrix."

"Is there a difference?"

"Of course there is; you're just a Gryffindor, so you can't tell."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"I'm a Ravenclaw, so," Emmeline said, slamming her hand down on the tabletop for emphasis, "I'm much astute than you are. Bellatrix is the psychotic one, Andromeda is the odd one, and... Narcissa is the one who's going to grow up and have a career dancing on a pole."

'Andromeda Black is an oddity,' Ted thought, as the Slytherin once again met his eyes across their respective tables and cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, as if to ask why he was staring at her. 'An oddity, for sure.'

* * *

 _So, how'd you feel about Ted? Reviews are ice cream cones (and opinions about Ted are sprinkles on top!)_


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello!_ _I've returned with more content. Enjoy!_

* * *

Chapter 3

-October, 1969, 5th Year-

It was only October, but Andromeda was cramming for OWLs. It wasn't enough that her mother's firstborn, Bellatrix, had received high marks on all of her exams—now she'd been struck with the notion that her second daughter should outscore her first.

Andy pitied Narcissa already.

Currently, Andy was flipping through her Transfiguration textbook, trying to find a spell to turn cats into dogs (which was surprisingly difficult - spells to turn lovers into frogs were more common), and -

"Andromeda Black without her sisters," Ted Tonks said from right behind her (she jumped and glared at him as witheringly as possible, which, as per usual, didn't dampen his smile in the least). "Never seen that one before."

"Well, Edward Tonks, I've never seen you in the library, so I think I win this time."

"Odd, that, as I'm here every day," Ted said lightly, setting a gigantic book down on the table and helping himself to the seat next to Andromeda. "Think that means I win."

Andromeda rolled her eyes, but couldn't help the smile spreading on her lips - and then, of course, she had to glance around to see if anyone was listening to her conversation and picking up that she enjoyed the company of a Mudblood (it would be the equivalent of social death, obviously).

"I think you're overly confident," she said, careful to keep her voice from rising in pitch.

"I think the world needs more confidence, Miss Black."

"I think overconfidence means you're compensating for something. Small balls, maybe?"

"Nah, I'm compensating for the company I'm keeping at the mo'. It's the pits."

"Pits my tits," Andromeda said, and Ted laughed out loud - maybe a little too loud, she thought; Madam Pince was striding over with a face as pinched as a butthole. She carried with her two scarily-large tomes, both of which Andromeda was sure she was going to use to beat their heads.

"Get out, both of you!" she said, flapping her arms maniacally (Andromeda had the good sense to duck, but Ted, who was not so lucky, got a full book in the face. Madame Pince was in too much of a psychotic frenzy to notice). "I won't have you filling my library with profanity!"

"Profanity?" Ted whispered as he snuck past Andromeda to leave, rubbing his book-assaulted nose as he went. "Seems more like profundity to me."

Andromeda snorted - and then, catching Madam Pince's glowering eye, stood hastily and took several paces into a more secluded area of the labyrinthine library.

In fact… she wasn't even sure she knew where she was. She'd stepped sideways into what looked like a tiny nook. Andromeda would only have to take a few steps to cross the space - had just one table inside and bookshelves enclosing it almost all the way around.

She took another step into the space.

Jane Austen was the first author that caught her eye, and she couldn't help but purse her lips at the title: Pride and Prejudice.

"Sounds like mum," she said under her breath, as if sharing an inside joke with one of her sisters. Or not, because if she ever implied that her mother was prejudiced, she'd have her tongue cut off.

"Emmeline, I'm telling you, he's going to get decapitated," came a voice from behind the nook, and, lest anyone found her and immediately assumed she was a blood traitor for being in this section of the library, Andromeda picked up a book without looking at the title and snuck out.

"Shack," Emmeline Vance said, unaware of the Slytherin who'd just slunk by behind her, "Obviously I don't approve of the situation, but it's really none of our business."

"If you knew anything about friendship as a concept, you'd know that this is exactly the type of thing friends are supposed to deal with. Here's what'll happen if we do nothing: She'll lead him on, he'll fall in love, she'll drop him and utterly destroy him, because that's what these Sacred-Twenty-Eight families are taught to do, he'll-"

"Don't forget that yours is one of those twenty eight," Emmeline said, interrupting him before he could finish his sentence.

Kingsley snorted mirthlessly.

"What, then? Should I go be best friends with her? Join her and her siblings in their Muggle-blood sacrifice?"

"No no," Emmeline said, as if warning a little boy off sticking his hands in a fireplace. "I'm just saying that she could surprise you. Maybe she isn't… like everyone else."

"Fat chance of that," Kingsley said, and was about to say something more when he spotted (perhaps by chance, or perhaps by something much deeper) Andromeda Black leaving the library at a quite clipped pace, a book under her arm. "Speak of the devil..."

Emmeline raised an eyebrow at her friend. "D'you think she heard you talking about Muggle rituals, then?"

"Nah," Kingsley said (though he sounded rather unsure), and slung his arm around Emmeline's shoulders. "C'mon, let's get back to lunch. Ted'll be wondering where we've got to."

* * *

Ted was, in fact, wondering when his friends would return. The minute he'd arrived at the Great Hall, the both of them had scuttled off to "talk," and he'd been left to eat his sandwich and nurse his face (which still smarted from the book Madame Pince had whacked it with) alone.

He had had the sneaking suspicion that they were going to gossip about him - especially with the way they'd both glanced back at him as they departed. Now, as they both reentered the Great Hall and both smiled rather forcibly as they caught his eye, Ted was sure of it.

"Had a fun talk?" he asked as the both of them sat down across from him at the Hufflepuff table.

"Yeah, fine," said Kingsley, who was bad at lying.

Ted, who was very receptive, said, "It was about Andromeda Black."

"She isn't a very good idea," Kingsley said quietly, as if this was news to any of them.

"I think Kingsley would rather you date someone like Dorcas Meadowes," Emmeline said, and took a bite of potato.

"Don't you fancy Doe?" Kingsley asked.

"My point exactly."

"Fancying Andromeda Black doesn't mean trying to be her boyfriend," Ted said, when no one else had spoken for a long, awkward moment. "I think I'd be quite a fool if I pretended I had any chance with someone like her."

"You're already quite a fool, though," Kingsley said, grinning, and Ted threw a bread roll at him.

* * *

"Got any nicknames, Andromeda Black?" Ted Tonks asked five hours later, as Andromeda heaved her cauldron off of the workspace she shared with him and shoved it into one of the table's hidden cubbies. It banged loudly against the back of the storage unit, and Andromeda kicked cheerfully it for good measure.

It wasn't that she was having a bad time, really. She was glad that potions was her last class of the day, and maybe even that Ted (the one Mudblood friend she'd ever allow herself to have, even just secretly) was in it. The only thing was that she had this book from the library and she wasn't supposed to - in fact, she was certifiably insane for possessing it - and it was burning a hole in her pocket.

"You can call me Andy," she said as she slammed her potions textbook shut and dropped it in her satchel. "Usually people call me Andy."

"Do people ever call you 'Dromeda?" Ted asked, apparently unfazed by the commotion Andy was making (which was good, after all - she was only jumpy because of that "contraband" book hidden in her robes, and it was best that no one found out about that).

"They don't, actually," Andromeda said as she flipped through her notebook to find a blank page where she could write the homework down. "'Dromeda seems almost as long as Andromeda, so it's kind of useless, if you ask me."

"Terms of endearment don't mean anything to you people, do they?" Ted asked, an eyebrow raised in question.

Andromeda ignored the shwoop that came in her chest as Ted said "endearment," and made a face at him before turning her eyes to the chalkboard.

"Endearment only means that it'll sting more when the ones who love you let you down," she said as her quill moved across her page.

"Sounds like you're reciting something someone's told you," Ted said, and parried her glower with a smile as he stepped closer towards her. "You've written 'endearment' there," he added, pointing his nail-bitten forefinger at her page.

She looked down. Indeed, she'd written "five endearment" instead of "five inches." She crossed this off angrily and wrote the correct term much larger and darker in the space below the error. She shoved her quill, inkwell, and notebook into her bag before dragging it roughly onto her shoulder.

"I'm going to dinner," she said, tone clipped, and strode out of the classroom before Ted could do something else horrible and disarming like _touch her book_ again.

It wasn't until the rest of her dorm mates had fallen asleep at night that Andromeda opened the drawer in her bedside table (at a snail's speed so as not to be heard) and took out the book she'd stolen from the library.

"Deep Chasms," she read, "By Rupert Grundle."

It turned out to be a sweeping history of the relationships between mudbloods and wizards. She knew virtually everything in it because of the schooling she'd been put through with her private tutors when she was younger, but this was different. Like seeing the back of your hand through a kaleidoscope.

And, truly, it would've been her hand, for she was in it. Or, her family was.

 _The term 'pure-blood' refers to a family or individual without Muggle (non-magic) blood. The concept is generally associated with Salazar Slytherin...  
To call oneself a pure-blood was more accurately a declaration of political or social intent than biological fact.  
In the early 1930s, a 'Pure-Blood Directory' was published anonymously in Britain, which listed the twenty-eight truly pure-blood families, as judged by the unknown authority who had written the book(Widely believed to be Cantankerus Nott.). The so-called 'Sacred Twenty-Eight' comprised the families of:  
Abbott  
Avery  
Black  
Bulstrode  
Burke  
Carrow  
Crouch  
Fawley  
Flint  
Gaunt  
Greengrass  
Lestrange  
Longbottom  
Macmillan  
Malfoy  
Nott  
Ollivander  
Parkinson  
Prewett  
Rosier  
Rowle  
Selwyn  
Shacklebolt  
Shafiq  
Slughorn  
Travers  
Weasley  
Yaxley_

 _Of these, the Black Family is possibly most prominent for its participation in..._

* * *

 _What do you think the sentence ends with? Leave an assumption in your review! Also, reviews are spring break - long ones are better ;)_


	4. Chapter 4

_Hi friends so here's the tea: I have my drafts for (basically) this whole story DONE but I just forget to edit. HERE'S ANOTHER CHAPTER AND DISCLAIMER I DON'T OWN THESE CHARACTERS!_

* * *

Chapter 4

-November, 1969, 5th Year-

 _The modern "pureblood" mindset is one of fear. It is predisposed to exclude others (and, when present in a Muggle-born person, is predisposed to exclude oneself) and has been prevalent for so long that all wizards inhabit such a mind, whatever their heritage. Those that are pureblooded naturally feel dominant, while those that are not naturally feel lesser, even if they assume forward-thinking physiognomies. It is this mindset which must be eradicated before we can truly-  
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"Andromeda?"

The Slytherin flung "Souls Encapsulated" to the floor and whirled, mind ringing with excuses, almost tripping over herself in an effort to stand in some composed fashion as her inescapable duplicity was at once revealed -

"Oh, it's just you," she said, sighing in relief as the curly hair and starry eyes of Ted Tonks came into focus.

Andeomeda sank to the floor again like a deflating balloon, breathing steadily through her nose in an effort to stop her heart from throwing itself against the inside of her ribcage every time it beat.

"Way to make a bloke feel special," Ted said, the picture of calm as he ambled over he sat down next to her. He folded his legs into a very uncomfortable-looking lotus position and Andromeda felt the nook get warmer.

She expected him to ask what she was doing in a space full of Muggle-themed literature, or why she was sitting on the floor, or any number of questions that she would've asked any respectable Slytherin she encountered in such a space, reading such strange material.

He didn't. He just hummed to himself in his typical Ted Tonks way, brushing his thumb across the spines closest to him.

Well, if he wouldn't ask her…

"What're you doing here, anyway?"

Ted began taking books off the shelves (seemingly at random). "Can't a Hufflepuff come and read a little Grimm's when he wants to?"

Andromeda stared at him. "What in Merlin's name would you want to read a Grim for?"

"Grimm's," Ted said, enunciating as if Andromeda were very old and hadn't heard him. "They're like Tales of Beedle the Bard, but for Muggles."

"So, fairytales," Andromeda said, unable to keep the derision from her voice.

"Sounds like you don't like them," Ted said, and flipped a gargantuan book open to a random page.

"I wouldn't know, really," Andromeda said, shrugging. "I've never read one."

"Your parents didn't ever read to you?"

"You won't find fairytales in the Black library," Andromeda said, the unsaid scoff-and-flounce perfectly clear in her tone. "We know better than to raise our children on false hope."

"Perhaps you're just too cynical to notice that hope works," Ted said cheerfully (though Andromeda noticed that his voice had taken on a bit of an airy edge).

"Perhaps so."

Ted shrugged and began to flip through his "Grimm's" - the yellowed parchment made a satisfying crackling noise as it turned. Andromeda stared at him for a moment, wondering for the hundredth time at his complete nonchalance with her.

She leaned in and began to read along.

* * *

 _A FEW HOURS LATER..._

Even if Bella hadn't been shrieking her ear off about "filthy Gryffindor blood traitors," Andromeda would have known that Cissy had Kingsley Shacklebolt's full attention.

Or, rather, she had the attention of his beater's bat.

It was almost comical how the rest of the scarf-and-mitten-clad students in the stands were completely focused on the chasers and the keepers and what-have-you, even though Narcissa Black's search for the snitch was interrupted every two seconds by great masses hurling towards her.

"Shacklebolt seems particularly locked onto Black," Rita Skeeter was saying in her annoyingly-chirpy voice. "I may be wrong, but usually a beater is supposed to impede the opposing team's progress, not check names off of his personal hit list. My theory is that Shacklebolt's secretly in love with Black, and he wants her dead so that he can find another bird to wank off to."

"That little fucking bint!" Bellatrix snarled, and Andromeda had to wrestle her sister's wand out of her hand before the latter could murder Rita.

"This has something to do with Ted Tonks," Andy said under her breath - but, apparently, not quietly enough to go unnoticed, because Bellatrix turned her head sharply in her direction at the sound of her voice.

"Who did what?" she demanded, so tensely that Andromeda could see a large vein protruding along the side of her head.

"NO ONE," the middle Black sibling insisted, while inside her head she was compiling a list of all the things she had ever told Ted about Cissy, however incriminating (or not), and concluding that she was doomed - literally doomed - because he'd definitely told Shacklebolt _some of those things_ and -

But she never determined exactly what these _some things_ could have been, because just then a piercing scream rose from the Slytherin stands and a blonde seeker hit the ground with a disturbingly loud _crack!_

* * *

Bella was arranging Cissy's blonde locks on the pillow like a halo, her face a faux-calm. Underneath her stony eyes, though, Andromeda knew her insides were crawling with feelings as uncomfortable as a million spiders' legs.

Andy, though worried about her sister, knew that Cissy would be fine. What alarmed her more was the idea that Ted was involved; that her reputation was involved, that Kingsley or Ted would cross paths with Bellatrix soon enough and all Hell would break loose.

Andromeda's stomach rumbled, as one's stomach did despite rather dire situations, and her eyes flitted to Bella to see if she'd heard - she hadn't - before returning to her thoughts.

What had Ted told Kingsley? What could she say in her defense? She'd rather just burn herself off the family tree herself than admit to slandering Cissy in front of a mudblood - even though, as far as anyone was concerned, each Black sister had a myriad of faults.

She hadn't much time to figure out a course of action, anyways, because just as she'd predicted, the door to the Hospital Wing flew open not a moment too soon, and in stepped Kingsley Shacklebolt, followed by - _surprise, surprise_ \- Ted Tonks and Emmeline Vance.

"Shacklebolt, you fucking cunt!" Bellatrix screeched, shooting towards him like a bullet til she had him pinned against the wall, whipping her wand out as she did. Andromeda's eyes flashed to Ted, who was already staring back at her, eyes focused like arrows. Apparently they'd had the same idea at the same time - that this interaction was about to go as well as a fight between a turned werewolf and a troll. "How dare you?! How the fuck do you plan to explain-"

"I came," Kingsley interrupted, "To apologize to Miss Black, but, as she's indisposed, and your other sister is staring at-"

"Indisposed!"

Bella was sounding more and more like the peacocks in Lucius's backyard, but at the moment Andromeda was just thankful that she hadn't given Shacklebolt the time to tell her what her younger sister had been staring at.

"Indisposed?!" Bellatrix repeated, an octave above her normal range. "You're the one who was trying to decapitate her! You and your whole blood-traitor clan had better watch your backs, or your head'll be the next thing flying through the fucking goalposts."

Andromeda stood up at this, her chair pushing back with a jarring scriiiitch.

"I think," Ted said gently, stepping towards Bellatrix (and Andromeda immediately wished for him to quit talking because it was important that nothing happened and that no one thought very hard about her connection with him), "I think what Kingsley means to say is that he's sorry, and that he isn't sure what came over him, but it wasn't anything we need to have a row over."

Bellatrix glared at Ted, and Andromeda felt as if she might throw up.

"If you think for a second that I'm in the business of taking bland apologies from dirty mudbloods-"

"You can't talk to my friend like that," Kingsley said over the wand held to his throat.

"If either of you knew your places in the world, you wouldn't be allowed to acknowledge each other on the street."

Then, several things happened at once. Kingsley raised his wand high above his head and Bella shrieked a curse just as Emmeline physically knocked the wand out of the eldest Black sister's hand and a shimmering pentagon grew in the middle of the entire room, pushing all five people back into five different corners.

Bellatrix still glared across the space at Kingsley, Ted was trying to catch Andy's eye, Andy was very deliberately avoiding everyone's gaze, and a second later, Madam Pomfrey had arrived.

"What in Merlin's name compelled you to start duelling in my infirmary?" Pomfrey demanded - she was now leaning over Narcissa to check her pulse, and though she wasn't looking at any of the teenagers that were scrambling to their feet, Andromeda felt she'd know if any of them so much as glanced at the other.

Andromeda stole a look at Ted anyway.

He raised his eyebrows.

She raised hers back, and felt a smile creep rebelliously onto her -

"All of you, out, if you're not going to explain this!" Pomfrey waved damp cloths in the students' faces. "You too, Miss Black!"

"Fucking cunt," Bella muttered under her breath and took Andromeda firmly by the arm. Once outside, Bella practically dragged her off, not waiting for Ted or his friends to follow.

An hour later, Andy was back in the library. It had become something of a safe haven for her. Its tall ceilings and ornate shelves reminded her of home, while the books that lined the mahogany cases were a far cry from the gold-gilded spines that graced the Black family manor.

She was buried in a treatise called "Common Sense" at the moment - so buried that she jumped when a voice directly above her said, "Come here often?"

"Stop doing that, Tonks," she said rather irritably, slamming her book down on the floor (deliberately careless - the book landed facedown).

Ted sat down next to her and picked up her book anyway, holding it high above her head despite her reaching arms and whispered demands that he give it back. "Better me than your sisters, yeah?"

"Well, they wouldn't want me talking to you either," Andromeda said, and leaned away from Ted - the feeling of his robes touching hers was like a pulse, and she needed not to feel it. "They'd really like it if you stopped existing altogether."

"Not existing sounds lovely," Ted said offhandedly.

Andromeda rolled her eyes, and the comment flew completely over her head.

"Living with them is quite good, actually. I just let them do what they want, and they leave me alone."

"Why'd you stop Bellatrix today, then?"

"With what?"

"With her assault on Kingsley."

"I don't know what you mean."

"'Dromeda." Ted raised an eyebrow and bumped her shoulder with his, seemingly unaware of the attempted scowl she gave him in response. "We both know that Madam Pomfrey didn't cast that charm."

"How in Merlin's name would you know that?" Andromeda said, standing up with a flounce and turning away from Ted so that he couldn't see the angry color that had rushed to her cheeks.

"I saw your lips moving," Ted said simply.

Andromeda just stared at him.

"Surprised I'm so perceptive, Miss Black?"

"Not at all," Andromeda said. "Although, if I were you, I'd have told Bella what I was doing. Then maybe she'd want me dead and not Shacklebolt."

Ted quirked an eyebrow.

"Wouldn't be good for you, though," he said.

"Well, that's true, but who would you rather sacrifice? Your best friend, or your blood-purist potions partner?"

Ted snorted.

"What?"

"Blood-purist potions partner," he said. "Has a nice ring to it."

"Of course it does, I made it up."

Ted stood up abruptly, silent (and Andromeda wondered what she'd said to bring such a strange look to his face).

"I've stood up for you, you know," Ted said, and his voice held the same edge that it'd had when he'd first told her he could mind his own space and she could mind hers. "Kingsley asked me when I'd gotten so wrapped up in this Andromeda Black nonsense, and I told him you weren't as awful as everyone thought. It'd be nice if you showed that side of yourself to someone else."

She'd never been walked out on before, she reflected once Ted had left. She didn't like it.

* * *

 _The end that's the whole fic. Just kidding. LEAVE A REVIEW BYE SEE YOU SOON (i hope)._


	5. Chapter 5

_HI FRIENDS! So I lowkey really wanna churn this out as fast as possible so I'm thinking of just doing bare-bones edits and then if I really feel my motivation dropping off I might just post all of the notes I have for this. I don't know yet, haha, but I hope you enjoy this chapter!_

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Chapter 5

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-December, 1969, 5th Year-

* * *

 _December 25, 1969_  
 _Thursday_  
 _My Dear Friend Ted,_  
 _Happy Christmas! How is the Tonks residence? How are you all holding up?_  
 _My gran's delighted that I'm coming to stay with you - I think she's a bit tired of spending time with me. She's almost ninety, anyhow, so I expect she needs rest from teenagers regardless of their relations to her. I'll be flooing over right after I send this letter, so look out for me in a few minutes!_  
 _Love,_  
 _Em_

Ted had just finished reading said letter (which was, oddly enough, written on a napkin) when the flames of his fireplace flickered green, and suddenly all five and a half feet of Emmeline Vance tumbled out of the grate (along with three very large purple suitcases).

"Ted!" She said, and wrapped her arms around him, knocking him ungracefully to the floor. "I've missed you!"

"It's nice to see you too, Em," Ted said. The Ravenclaw helped him to his feet again. "You're a little early, you know."

Emmeline seemed to freeze for a second, like she'd been petrified - and then resumed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Oh, right. I know it's Christmas and everything - I'm sorry. I was just in Diagon Alley and I thought it'd just be easier to floo from there - and I couldn't wait to see you!"

Ted was becoming vaguely aware that something was amiss (how would Emmeline have had her bags in Diagon Alley? And why was she there in the first place?) but he resolved to let it be. It was best, he'd learned, to leave people alone until they wanted to tell him things (and they normally did, eventually). Instead, he and Emmeline went up to his room, where she and Kingsley normally stayed every other Christmas. Ted's mum (Kate Tonks, who told all of Ted's guests to call her Kate) brought them both enormous helpings of chicken soup and leaned in the doorway for a moment as they sat on the floor and ate, their backs against Ted's bed frame.

"Will we be seeing you over the summer as well?" Kate asked.

"I'm going to try and get a flat and work in Diagon Alley this summer, so if you stop by, sure!" Emmeline grinned - but it was a little too forced, and her voice was a little too light. Maybe, Ted thought, he'd better ask her if she was all right.

"We were actually planning to holiday in France for the summer," Kate said before Ted could speak - she hadn't seemed to notice the oddity in Emmeline's mood. "Maybe then Kingsley will be available."

"Maybe," Em said, "But he did tell me that his family wants to go to Australia."

"That's not quite as exciting as Egypt over Christmas, is it though?"

"Not really, no."

"Well, I'd better leave you two to catch up," Kate said, turning to leave, but turned back to Emmeline at the last second, her eyes twinkling. "Just do me one favor - find out who he keeps getting letters from, won't you?" (Ted choked on a spoonful of soup). "He's always blushing like mad and locking himself up in here."

"Oh, don't worry, Kate," Emmeline said, fixing Ted with a stare. "I'll find out."

The second Ted's bedroom door closed, he and Emmeline both abandoned their soup bowls and raced towards his desk. Ted tripped over a large pile of clothes (he could've sworn they hadn't been lying there the day before), but pitched himself forward and only just snatched his stack of letters before Emmeline could grab them.

The envelopes made a distinctive crunch as he grasped them, and, breathing heavily, he got to his feet.

"You're usually so forthcoming about these things, Ted," Emmeline said, smirking as she made a few fruitless snatches at the papers. "You spout soliloquies whenever Andromeda Black smiles at you. What's different about these letters, then?"

"Nothing," Ted said, as convincingly as he possibly could.

"Oh," said Emmeline. "Then, I suppose I don't have to read them..."

Ted breathed a sigh of relief - a second too early, because Emmeline, in a sudden burst of agility, jumped up and snatched the parchment from his hand, pivoting in midair so she landed facedown on his bed, the letters crunched beneath her stomach.

"Em!"

"Hah."

And so Ted had no choice but to sit back against his headboard next to Emmeline and watch as she read Andromeda's letters.

"'Dear Ted,'" she read, "'I don't write to many people. Most of my correspondence is with my family...' That's boring... Oh, here's something! 'Dear Ted. I've come to the conclusion that you're no worse than me. I know, I know, I sound like an utter ninny, but if you must know, I used to have a tutor who taught us songs about how useless muggles were.'"

Emmeline paused and turned her head toward Ted. He imagined that she wanted to kill him just a little bit.

"Keep reading," he prompted, when she said nothing.

She stared at him for another minute.

"Okay. 'I used to have a tutor who taught us songs about how useless muggles were. Now, though, I can't decide where the difference falls. Muggles and wizards both have pots and pans and live in houses. I know this. I also know that they both need glasses to fix their sight. And wizards have magic, which is brilliant, obviously, but muggles have mathematics. And I've looked at maths textbooks since I started learning about muggles, and I can't decipher them for the life of me. I suppose if you take arithmancy, you've got to know maths, but most wizards _don't do that_.'"

Emmaline looked at Ted again. "D'you know what Kingsley would say to this?"

Ted sighed, and thanked Merlin that his friend was in Egypt rather than having a field day with all of Andromeda Black's handwriting.

"He would say, 'Congratulations, she's got a modicum of common sense, do you want a blue ribbon?'"

Emmeline raised her eyebrows at Ted, as if to say, "Exactly," and then turned back to the papers.

Hours later, after supper had come and gone and Christmas carolers had stopped by, they were still at it. Ted's room was long and not very wide, so he and Emmeline had put pillows in the middle and lay with their feet at either side of the room and their heads close, so that they could talk. Now, they were both lying on their backs; Ted was looking up at the ceiling, and Emmeline was gazing at the letters she held above her head, a flashlight set bright-side-up on the floor beside her.

Em had read possibly all there was to know about Andromeda Black (for, stoic as the Slytherin might be, Ted had found her letters better windows to her soul than her eyes had ever been). If Andromeda found out about this reading-aloud thing... well, that was a thought best left undisturbed.

"'Dear Ted,'" Emmeline said, using a small torch to see the words in the otherwise-dark room, "'I get so uncomfortable when people talk about their lovers. I suppose I just don't understand the concept of living just to make a person happy, or living just because one person loves you. It doesn't make sense. If you have nothing to live for aside from one person who could desert you at any moment, I don't think that counts as a reason to live.' Jesus Christ, Ted, she's such a negative Nelly."

"Maybe," Ted conceded, "But she never gets as negative as I do."

"It isn't like you have a choice," Emmeline said, smacking Ted's head with the letters.

Ted only rolled his eyes and reached up to snatch the letters back. Quick as he could, he threw them discus-style so that they landed near his feet, as far away from Emmeline as possible. He stared after them in the blackness for a moment before lying down again, hoping they hadn't landed in anything disgusting like a pile of his muddy trainers.

"That's not fair," Emmeline said, dropping her voice to a whisper as she turned her torch off and set it on the floor.

"Reading them in the first place wasn't very fair, either," Ted said, an unmistakable edge growing to his voice.

"I know," Emmeline said, just as Ted was about to apologize for sounding testy. "I'm sorry."

Ted closed his eyes and rolled onto his stomach.

"It's all right," he said, the bite gone from his tone, replaced by a kind of emotionlessness that he hated even more.

There was a rustling of cotton as Emmeline adjusted the pillow she'd brought.

"Night, Ted."

"See you in the morning, Em."

Ted felt rather stupid now, which made the day seem rather bleak, and the floor seem rather hard, and his pajamas seem rather uncomfortable.

He should've just hidden the letters before Emmeline arrived, he thought, or never written Andromeda in the first place. Then Andromeda's secrets would be safe, and the awkwardness of the moment would be gone, and Ted would be able to go to sleep - all of which were fruitless hopes.

After what felt like entirely too long, Ted was able to convince himself that there was no use worrying about what had already happened - he didn't own a time turner, as far as he could tell - and that Emmeline probably didn't hate him for ruining her letter-reading extravaganza. The sounds of the creaking stairs and the feel of the blankets on his skin started to fade from his consciousness, and he had just begun to let himself fall asleep when Emmeline spoke again.

"Ted? Are you awake?"

Barely, Ted thought.

"I lied to you just a little," she said, her voice small.

Ted hummed in response, hoping he sounded interested enough for her to go on.

"My gran told me not to come back."

The words hung in the air like dementors.

Ted lifted himself up onto his elbows, suddenly five times more alert, the rustling of his sheets loud to his ears. In the darkness, Ted could only make out the bundle of blankets that was his best friend.

"It's all right," she said, once the silence had stretched out. "It's just. Whenever I tell people things, they want me to leave. First my parents with magic, and now my gran, because I told her I was gay. And I want to know if it ever stops. If people ever stop leaving."

Ted sighed and sank into his pillows again.

"I'm not sure they ever do," he whispered.

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 _Reviews are cookies! See you soon :)_


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